Enid Blyton meets the Spanish Aristocrat

The Mystery of the Disappearing Author Copies has finally been solved, thanks to lovely medical romance writer Lynne Marshall, the wonders of email (and lashings of ginger beer.) Lynne got in touch at the weekend to say that a slightly bashed up boxful of copies of Spanish Aristocrat Forced Bride had been delivered to her house in California. (California, USA…Cheshire, UK…. I suppose I can just about see a certain semantic similarity, though looking out of my window into the dripping green English excuse for a summer it’s obvious that’s as far as it goes.)

Anyway, I'm hugely grateful to Lynne for solving the mystery. Now we just have to work out how to get them from there to here, but while we wrestle with that issue I’m going to get on with saying a little bit about the book and come up with a question or two so I can give away some copies when I finally get my hands on them. Here in the UK the new series of The Tudors began on Friday and so lovely Henry Cavill (face of Tristan) has been on my TV screen and my mind a lot of late. Let’s remind ourselves what he looks like, shall we?

Oh yummy. (Did I mention that I actually came face to face with him last summer when I went to visit Abby Green in Dublin? Oh I did?? Only 252 times???) In writing and in childbirth, the distance of time has a funny way of erasing the pain so that when you look back you only remember the excitement. However a quick glance back into the archive here (and here) shows that in this case my mind isn’t deceiving me. I loved Tristan and I actually, honestly, genuinely loved writing this book.

I think I’ve already mentioned somewhere that the idea for Tristan and Lily's story came to me while I was putting on mascara. It was during the period of stress-related insanity we now fondly call the writing of Taken for Revenge, Bedded for Pleasure, and I could see instantly that the conflict in this new story would be so simple and straightforward that I almost wept with relief. Given the mascara situation would have been very foolish indeed, so I reached for a pen and wrote the synopsis on the back of an envelope, wondering as I did so whether it might just be a teeny weeny bit depressing, even by my standards.

However, I’m nothing if not shallow and the lure of a handsome playboy tortured by a difficult past was too strong to resist. Tristan Losada Montalvo de Romero is staggeringly wealthy, fearsomely intelligent and breath-catchingly gorgeous, but happy he certainly isn’t—a fact which he attempts to blot out in the classic, time-honoured alpha-male way—ie by sleeping with as many beautiful women as humanly possible. When he meets Lily Alexander at a party at his best friend Tom Montague’s ancestral home he is interested only in temporarily blotting out the nightmarish reality of his complicated life and adding her to his list of one-night conquests.


Lily has reached a crossroads in a life that feels empty and purposeless. Along with her best friend Scarlet she was spotted by a modeling scout in her home town of Brighton at the age of 17 and from there drifted into a career she never actively sought, in which she has always felt ill at ease. Secretly she longs for a life that is far removed from the sterile, shallow world she finds herself in. She wants the warmth and security she lacked as a child... she wants marriage and motherhood; feelings which are intensified by Scarlet's blossoming relationship with Tom Montague.

And so it is that, a few weeks after her magical night with Tristan, the news that she's pregnant doesn't feel like a disaster. A shock, definitely, but also a source of secret, surprising joy. It's what she's always wanted, so she can’t think of it as being a mistake. However, telling Tristan about it is a whole different matter. That's the bit where it all starts to go a bit off road.

I incorporated into Lily all my own youthful and very politically incorrect yearnings to get married and have babies. When I was a teenager the phrase ‘what do you want to do when you grow up’ failed to stir ambitions of global travel and corporate success in my chest, but conjured images of a house with a fireplace and a big old brass bed, shelves full of books and a pram beneath the apple tree. (Oddly enough, a towering pile of ironing and liberal quantities of Rice Krispies scattered across the floor were absent from this vision.) I suppose Lily’s story is a slightly cautionary tale about being careful what you wish for, but I like to think that it also proves that if you love wholly and selflessly; if you have faith and keep on believing, you can find happiness in one form or another. Lily almost loses everything, but she hangs on to her dream… and in doing so discovers that it wasn’t quite what she thought it was.

Anyway, back in reality we're now in the final week of the summer holidays (news which came as a shock to me when He broke it to me at the weekend. I was firmly of the impression that we had another week...) so chaos reigns around here and I must go and sort it out before it becomes a job for the professionals. Back soon with more background info on the book. Tomorrow-- the setting and locations.

Letting Go

I’m finding it hard to let go of this book.

There weren’t really any revisions, but my editor agreed that the ending was crying out for an epilogue, so I had a lovely excuse to submerge myself right back into it and wallow with delicious self-indulgence in my favourite part of writing (ie. the end). The playlist I’ve had while I’ve been working on this one has been absolutely cracking, so it’s been on at full volume while I’ve been sitting at my computer with a box of tissues, sending Tristan and Lily off into the sunset to get on with their life together.

I fell for Tristan in a big way, and I’m quite sure if I found myself standing a couple of feet away from Henry Cavill again now and he smiled his beautiful smile at me I would be utterly incapable of the restraint I showed in the same situation back in June. Not since lovely Orlando Winterton have I lost my heart so thoroughly to a hero...

(Talking of whom, I had a lovely Orlando moment this week when, collapsing in front of the TV with a glass of credit-crunch cava to celebrate the end of the book (again), I came face to face with delicious James D’Arcy— in military uniform. It was a drama series called The Commander, I think, but obviously I’m a little sketchy on the plot details since I was far too busy gazing lustfully at the striped epaulettes on those broad shoulders. Hell-o Orlando!)

Anyway, as another hero gets his girl it’s time to unpin the pictures from above my computer and change my screensaver to a new man, and for this I need your help...

Back tomorrow for a little opinion poll!

A good spell of writing.

I love it when it's like this: when the plot fits together, the words flow and the characters don't stop talking-- even when the computer is off and the house is full of noise, distraction and plumbers. I'm even loving getting up at 5, which is most unlike me, writing faster and happily sinking deeper into the world of the book.

Usually the only things I sink happily into are large glasses of wine, and bed, so this is good. I am very ready to sink. Sinking, in this context, is an extremely positive thing.

(It is also not before time.)

This is my most cold and ruthless hero to date. As a rule I don't go much for cold and ruthless; I tend to find laid back and laconic much more sexy. I think living with the plumbers for so long has brought out my unforgiving side.

New book. New man. New routine.

I’m so excited about this one. This is the book I’ve been itching to write since January when I was struggling to finish the troublesome Olivier’s story (Taken for Revenge, Bedded for Pleasure) and the idea came to me fully formed, in a flash of clarity and inspiration while putting on mascara. (That part is purely coincidental I should mention. The plot is in no way mascara-related.) I nearly poked my eye out in my haste to grab a pen and get it down before it slipped away.


So, after the excesses of Dublin I’m back in the White Chair of Creativity (as Rachel calls it) with pictures of my new hero pinned up all over the place. I’m liking him lots—and not just because I saw him in the (extremely lovely) flesh last week and he smiled at me, though I’m sure that this can only make the writing flow more easily. I first fell in love with Henry Cavill in Tristan and Isolde, when he looked dark, dangerous and delicious—as well as excitingly dirty...



But now I've seen how he looks when he’s scrubbed up I'm even more smitten...

So far, so gorgeous-- I’m feeling totally positive about the new book and the new man. It’s the new routine I’m less happy about.

I’m not a big fan of change. In fact, it’s pretty true to say that I embrace change with about the same level of enthusiasm with which I’d hug a man-eating shark, but sometimes you just have to take a deep breath and do these things. (Fortunately so far I’ve never been in a situation where physical contact with sharks is necessary... obviously.) My latest deadline nightmare of sixteen hour days (which coincided with the children being off for half term) punctuated by regular heart palpitations and adrenaline rushes and fuelled by a diet of sugar and caffeine convinced me that something has to change in the way I handle this writing life. So, with the summer holidays yawning like a vast chasm between here and the next deadline I’m following the advice of the brilliant (and endlessly kind) Michelle Styles and planning to stick to a slow and steady thousand words a day. I have this dreadful kind of guilt thing that says that because I’m a working writer I have to spend every available moment at my keyboard, and this has turned me into a miserable recluse who dives under the desk whenever the phone rings (If I hear it, that is. Mostly I have music on so loudly that this isn’t an issue.) I’ve come to the conclusion I need to work less, but more efficiently. And also go out for more coffee and boozy lunches with friends, and bake more fairy cakes with the children.

The theory sounds fabulous, doesn’t it? Now, let’s see if it works.